Bad Law

Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America

Elie Mystal

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Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

The New Press
02 July 2025

Politics & government; Political science & theory; Conservatism & right-of-centre democratic ideologies; Jurisprudence & general issues

The New York Times bestselling author brings his trademark legal acumen and passionate snark to offer a brilliant takedown of ten incredibly bad pieces of legislation that are causing way too much misery to millions

""If it were up to me, I'd treat every law passed before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as presumptively unconstitutional. The government of this country was illegitimate when it ruled over people who had no ability to choose the rules.""

-from the introduction to Bad Law

While Elie Mystal may not endorse any laws created before all Americans were entitled to vote for our lawmakers, in Bad Law he hones in on ten of what he considers the most egregiously awful laws on the books today. These are pieces of legislation that are making life worse, not better, for Americans, and that-he argues with clarity, eloquence, and paradigm-shifting legal insight-should be repealed completely.

On topics ranging from abortion and immigration to voting rights and religious freedom, we have chosen rules to live by that do not reflect the will of most of the people. With respect to our decision to make a law that effectively grants immunity to gun manufacturers, for example, Mystal writes, ""We live in the most violent, wealthy country on earth not in spite of the law; we live in a first-person-shooter video game because of the law.""

But, as the bestselling author of Allow Me to Retort points out, these laws do not come to us from on high; we write them, and we can and should unwrite them. In a marvelous and original takedown spanning all the hot-button topics in the country today, one of our most brilliant legal thinkers points the way to a saner tomorrow.

By: Elie Mystal
Imprint: The New Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 215mm, Width: 139mm, Spine: 14mm
ISBN: 9781620978580
ISBN 10: 162097858X
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 02 July 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Elie Mystal is the New York Times bestselling author of Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution (The New Press) as well as The Nation's legal analyst and justice correspondent, and the legal editor of the More Perfect podcast on the Supreme Court for Radiolab. He is an Alfred Knobler Fellow at Type Media Center, and a frequent guest on MSNBC and Sirius XM. He lives in New York.